Richfield is still paying about $30,000 a year for 10 Flock cameras, and the City Council has three ways to answer for the bill. It can keep the cameras and add protocols, look for another vendor, or shut the program down. The city has said it doesn't have the breakdown a renewal argument usually leans on: how many cases in each category the camera data actually helped.
The deadline is mid-February 2027. KSTP reported that leaders have to decide then because the city's contract with Flock expires in mid-March, and that the cameras went into use in April 2024. A vote on that schedule would land a little under three years after the system was turned on.
A Call Count, Not a Case Ledger
KSTP reported 624 calls for service along with that April 2024 start. The city said it doesn't have a matrix showing how many cases in each category were helped by Flock data. Those figures aren't interchangeable. One is a call total. The other would say, by type of case, where the camera data helped, and Richfield has said it doesn't have that sort.
Officials said they are working on a transparency portal so the public can get that information. The portal is the route they have named for the missing breakdown, a place where residents could see the category picture the city says it doesn't have now. It is still described as something being built, not as a page already open.
That leaves the council deciding first. Keep the cameras, and the extension would come before the portal exists. Switch vendors, and the public still wouldn't have a category ledger for the system being replaced. End the program, and the same gap is what residents would have to go on. The record described so far is a call total, a portal in progress, and no matrix.
Shares With Police, and a Seven-Day Default
Police Chief Jay Henthorne said the data has been shared only with police in some cases, and not with state or federal agencies, KSTP reported. The line in that statement is state and federal government. Inside it, other police departments have received data in some cases. The reported comment doesn't name those departments or say how often the shares happened.
A Flock spokesperson told the Minnesota Star Tribune that customers own the camera data, and that the company now defaults to deleting it after seven days. Under that default, a capture would be gone in a week unless someone had already pulled it into a case. Whether Richfield's cameras use the default is a different question from the policy Flock described.
State law is tighter for a narrower set of people. Section 13.824 says automated license plate reader data related to a chapter 5B program participant must be destroyed at collection or when the request is received, whichever is later, unless the data are active criminal investigative data. Other Minnesota governments have discussed Flock cameras as plate readers, which is the category that provision covers.
Starter, and What the Bill Does Not Buy
The city's Flock FAQ puts Richfield on the lowest available tier, called Starter. That tier, the page says, doesn't include custom map layers, real-time routing, CAD integration, Flock911, or FreeForm searches.
The annual cost makes the omission concrete. About $30,000 for 10 cameras is roughly $3,000 a camera, and the FAQ says that subscription isn't buying live routing, a connection to computer-aided dispatch, or FreeForm search. The city has described the product it has. The advanced tools are listed as absent, not as extras quietly folded into the contract.
Protocols and features are easy to blur in a renewal debate, and the FAQ keeps them apart. Added protocols would be new rules on the tier Richfield already has. They wouldn't install custom maps, real-time routing, or the dispatch integration the city says Starter lacks. Shopping for another vendor would mean judging a different product against this one, not assuming a higher Flock tier is sitting unused.
A Metro Split Over the Same Company
Richfield is weighing a small contract after a run of louder exits. MPR News reported in September that more than a dozen Minnesota jurisdictions had paused or ended Flock use, including St. Paul, Duluth, and Sherburne County. Plymouth's City Council voted to stop using all of the city's Flock Safety cameras, citing data privacy concerns and plummeting public trust in the company.
Plymouth had approved automated license plate readers in 2023 and had 16 permanent Flock cameras, a larger set than Richfield's 10. Its police said they had never shared camera data with federal agencies and had recently extended that restriction to all police agencies. Henthorne's account is a different rule: shares with police in some cases, and none with state or federal agencies.
Sheriff's offices have not matched the city exits. The Star Tribune reported that the Anoka County Sheriff's Office signed a one-year pilot for just under $175,000 after first discussing a larger program. The pilot would add 73 license plate readers, while some cities in the county push to opt out. Nowthen's council voted to keep Flock cameras out of the suburb and demanded the sheriff remove the one camera there on a county road. Ending a city's own contract is a vote. Getting a sheriff's camera off a county road is a demand.
The same snag shows up in Ramsey and Hennepin. Ramsey County's sheriff planned to install three Flock cameras in Vadnais Heights, and that city council ordered a pause. St. Paul's council called on Ramsey County to end its Flock contract, a county system separate from St. Paul's own place on the list of jurisdictions that paused or ended use. Minneapolis asked Hennepin County to remove its cameras. Next to a one-year pilot just under $175,000, Richfield's question is 10 cameras and about $30,000 a year.
A Cancellation Is Not a Takedown Date
If the council ends the program, Flock's standard contract still wouldn't name the day the hardware leaves. WGME reported that the standard agreement sets no specific removal deadline. Equipment must be removed within a commercially reasonable time period. That phrase is doing a lot of work. A resident can't circle it.
Plymouth already hit the space between a cancellation and a clear pole, and the accounts conflict. WGME reported that Plymouth police physically unplugged the cameras after saying the company ignored the city's September 2026 cancellation request. The same reporting said local news showed the cameras still up as of late October. One version has the system cut off. The other still has the cameras on the street.
Richfield isn't in that aftermath. The decision in front of the council is still the three-way choice KSTP described, due by mid-February, with the contract expiring in mid-March. If the vote is to leave, the next practical question is the one those Plymouth reports didn't settle: when a canceled Flock camera actually comes down.
